Flooding: ‘Citizens are exhausted’

St. Jean sur Richelieu – Premier Jean Charest stood in the pouring rain beside the swollen Richelieu River on Thursday to express compassion for residents coping with the region’s worst flooding on record.

“Everyone is here to reach out a helping hand to people who are affected by floods that are very severe, the most severe I have seen in my 30 years in politics,” he said.

Six hundred troops arrived Thursday and immediately got to work distributing sandbags in the region southeast of Montreal, where rising waters have affected 2,500 homes and caused 500 families to evacuate.

Authorities closed down the campus of the Royal Military College and issued a tap-water warning as rain continued to push up water levels.

“Since the flooding in the Saguenay, it’s probably the worst catastrophe we have had in Quebec,” added Charest, who called in the armed forces Wednesday to relieve local authorities, worn out after two weeks of piling sandbags and monitoring household pumps.

Charest noted while the 1996 Saguenay floods were sudden and violent, the Richelieu has risen gradually but relentlessly over the past fortnight and residents are close to their breaking point.

Charest added it is too soon to assess the damage or make specific promises for government assistance since, with more rain expected Friday and Saturday, water levels will likely continue to rise.

In neighbouring St. Blaise sur Richelieu, where flooding affects at least 475 of the town’s 900 dwellings, only 80 families had evacuated their homes.

“I want to stay. This is my place,” said Yolande Gadoury, 45, a mother of five who wore hip-waders to carry her 5-year-old son, Marc-André, through two blocks of thigh-deep water to the main road, where a friend, Manon Pelletier, had arranged to pick him up.

Gadoury’s clapboard house is usually a block away from the river, but now water laps at the foundation.

However, Gadoury said a pump in the basement is keeping the main floor dry. She uses an inflatable raft to ferry groceries to the house.

“I’m going to stay as long as I can,” she said.

Gadoury shared a tearful hug with Pelletier, who was taking Marc-André to her upper duplex in St. Jean to give the child a break from being cooped up inside all day.

“It’s boring for a child to stay in the house all the time,” said Pelletier, 38.

Gadoury’s neighbour, Sylvain Goyette, 31, said he has temporarily moved in with his girlfriend because his house is under a metre of water. Goyette had dropped by to check up on things.

Nearby, St. Blaise’s town hall has been turned into a military command centre.

“We will stay as long as we are needed,” said Lt.-Col. Simon Bernard, commander of the military operation. “We can sense that citizens are exhausted,” he added.

In the coming days, the troops will assist provincial police and civil authorities by visiting homes to assess residents’ needs, Bernard said.

“There are many people who refuse to leave their homes. We will visit those residents,” Bernard said. However, he emphasized that at present there are no plans for a forced evacuation.

St. Blaise Mayor Jacques Desmarais said like many of his neighbours, he is intent on staying in his home as long as possible. However, he has sent his two sons, age 17 and 14, to stay with friends.

“People are intelligent enough to know when it is the time to leave,” said Desmarais, who is also a Montreal police officer. “Let’s hope that time does not come.”

Alain Comtois drove to St. Blaise to survey the damage to his trailer. Much of his 600-by-300-foot wooded lot is under water.

“It’s terrible,” he said.

“But when I see other people with big houses, I think, at least it’s only my chalet.”

His son, William, Comtois-Jean, 12, surveyed the swampy land where he likes to run free on his summer vacations. “It’s going to be a big mess,” he said.

William, who lives with his mother in St. Jean, has been staying with family in St. Hubert since Monday because his house is flooded.

Gilles Bérubé, a journalist at Le Canada Français, a venerable local weekly, said he has covered spring floods for 33 years, but nothing matches the current disaster.

Lake Champlain water levels reached 103 feet above sea level this week – a foot higher than the previous record of 102 feet set in 1869, he said.

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